Puzzle 10
by Darcy Krasne, Ian Tullis, Ari Nieh, and Dave Savitt


The key words "period" and "epochal" appear in the first and last diary
entries.  In fact, each entry in the diary clues a geological time 
period, in two ways.  

The first diary entry corresponds to the Cambrian period: the Cambrian
period saw a huge diversification of life on earth; and Cambria was the
Roman name for Wales.  

Every diary entry similarly clues a geological time period.  Moreover, if 
the period from the Cambrian to the present day were mapped onto a single
day, then the time (hrs and minutes) on each subsequent diary entry is the 
time of the beginning of the geological period being clued.

The periods clued are:

Cambrian
ordOvician
siluriaN
Devonian
pennsYlvanian
pennsyLvanian
permiAn
juRassic
creTaceous
Holocene	[actually an epoch, as clued in the puzzle]

The seconds indicated on each diary entry are all single digits.
Using these numbers as indices in the above words (i.e., take the
nth letter if the number of seconds is n), one obtains the answer
CONDYLARTH.